A couple of weeks ago, Chris Pikula had the idea of doing a Rotisserie draft with every card in Vintage. A Rotisserie draft is when every card in the draft is laid out on a table, and players select from those rather than from packs. In this case, every card in Vintage was on the ‘table’ and the players would draft via Google Spreadsheets. Kyle Boddy heard about the idea and decided to hold one in the Pacific Northwest. Rather than going until we exhausted the Vintage cardpool, each person would draft seventy-five cards and construct a maindeck and a sideboard from those. Basics had to be drafted along with spells. Kyle got myself, Dave Guskin, Zac Hill, Greg Marques, Dwayne St. Arnauld, Ket Neg, and Charles Dupont to battle.
One of the most interesting aspects about a Rotisserie draft is how powerful signals can be. An early pick of Mishra’s Workshop, for example, is a very strong signal that one is on an artifact plan, and, because Workshop is simultaneously one of the best cards in the artifact deck and an obvious commitment to artifacts, other people will recognize that you’re more or less locked in and that they can only harm both of you by trying to poach artifacts from you. This is an interesting example of game theory, where typically the player going first is at a disadvantage because other players gain the information of the first player’s move. However, if the first player can commit to a strategy such that other players cannot also employ that strategy without reducing their payout, going first is quite powerful.
But what deck should I draft? I thought that decks would struggle the most with issues with mana and redundancy. (There is one other issue that I didn’t recognize early enough: problems with brutal sideboard cards.)
Consider a Zoo-style beatdown deck packed full of small, efficient creatures and burn. What are your creatures going to be? Wild Nacatl, Goblin Guide, Kird Ape, Loam Lion, Grim Lavamancer, Steppe Lynx, Jackal Pup, Savannah Lions, and Elite Vanguard are all pretty reasonable, but most curve-based beatdown decks want a dozen or more one-drops to ensure that they never miss, and there just aren’t that many awesome one-mana creatures in all of Magic. You can probably find enough playable two- and three-drops such that your squad is not totally embarrassing, but if all you’re bringing to the table is a good curve and some disruption while the other guy has Ancestral or Time Vault or Necropotence, you simply can’t afford to stumble.
Accordingly, it’s incredibly important for beatdown decks that all of their lands enter the battlefield untapped. If your opponent is working towards a devastating end game, it’s simply unacceptable to Time Walk yourself because of awkward mana. However, if your deck is three colors, you may not be able to assemble enough untapped lands to have a stable deck. All of the original dual lands are in pretty high demand, so you’ll need to take them pretty early, but access to fetchlands is also important, and they also tend to get snapped up quite quickly; you can probably get two or three duals and add in the Ravnica shocklands to help shore up your mana, but you’ll need fetchlands to stabilize everything, and it can be hard to get enough of all of the requisite lands to make your mana come together. You can fall back on filter lands and painlands, but, again, if a consistent mana curve is all you’ve got, you need to make sure your mana is rock solid.
The strains on the manabases of Control decks are a little different. Control decks can usually afford lands that enter the battlefield tapped, but they also tend to play more color-intensive spells; double-Blue permission and card drawing, and either Green recursion or White removal, and maybe even more colors. Still, because the control decks can usually afford a few taplands in the early game, they can stretch their mana a little further.
Of course, you can always take the opposite approach and ensure rock-solid mana stability by sticking to a single color. In our draft, Charles Dupont ended up drafting a Mono-Black aggressive deck. Charles sacrificed some card quality for his mana stability (Pulse Tracker made the team, for example), but never had to suffer any of the mana-related problems that plagued the multicolor decks. Charles ended up going 5-2, relying on Black disruption spells to keep his opponents off balance long enough for his beaters to finish the job.
There are dangers to strategies that are inherently underpowered, though. When your opponents have cards such as Tinker or Library of Alexandria or Mind’s Desire, there are going to be some games where you get utterly and completely blown out. For example, I beat Charles with an artifact-based beatdown deck. In game 3, I played Mishra’s Workshop and Trinisphere, then Synod Centurion, then Rishadan Port, Sword of Light and Shadow, Ported him, equipped, attacked, played another guy, then Ported him again and blew up a manland with Tectonic Edge. There was actually just no way that Charles could have won that game. In another game, I cast turn 3 Lodestone Golem turn 4 Armageddon against Zac Hill storm combo deck…and he cast Empty the Warrens for twelve on his next turn. (Lotus Bloom, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Gush, Talisman, and something else.) Sometimes you get gotten.
You could, of course, simply draft a combo deck full of restricted cards. Dave Guskin did this by staking out his territory early, taking Time Vault second, Voltaic Key shortly after that, and then packing his deck full of tutors and a few counterspells. Zac Hill drafted a deck full of artifact mana, draw-sevens, and Mind’s Desire, though his draft went badly when Greg Marques blindsided Zac by picking Tendrils of Agony as both a hate and an answer to cards such as Worship. Zac’s deck was still quite good, featuring Mind Over Matter and Temple Bell along with Yawgmoth’s Bargain, but without Tendrils it lacked some vital tools in the endgame.
This just illustrates one of the dangers of drafting such linear decks; the possibility of having a vital piece of your deck hate drafted from you is quite real. In most eight-mans, hate drafting is a loose strategy because it’s highly unlikely that you will a) play against the person who has the card that you wanted to hate draft and b) they will draw the card you wanted to hate and c) that card will be the deciding factor in the match; meanwhile, you lose significant equity against the other drafters at your table. In our Rotisserie, though, everyone played everyone, so if crippling an opponent’s deck and ensuring a match win might be worth a middle pick. Further, most hate drafting in Booster Drafts is done in the first pick of a pack; in Rotisserie, you can swipe a vital piece of someone’s deck as late as thirtieth.
Another risk that the linear decks take is that even if your opponents don’t specifically hate draft your cards, they’ll probably pick up some brutal sideboard cards against you. I ended up in an artifact-based aggro/prison deck sort of based on Vintage MUD. My opponents had Hurkyl’s Recall; Energy Flux; Kataki, War’s Wage; Shattering Spree; Seeds of Innocence; and Serenity. Yikes. Charles’s Mono-Black deck had to fight through Light of Day. We had Chill, Sphere of Law, and Circle of Protection: Red for Greg’s Red aggro deck.
After looking over the cardpool and seeing who I was drafting with, I decided that most people would be drafting either control or combo decks, with one or two aggro decks. I also thought that there probably wouldn’t be enough lands to support multiple three-plus color decks, so I decided that if I could pick up Time Vault in the first or second round I’d like to move in on a Blue Control deck splashing some Black tutors to put Time Vault/Voltaic Key together. If that didn’t work out, I’d try to draft a Prison deck based vaguely on Vintage MUD.
Onto the draft!
I ended up with the first pick, and I couldn’t justify taking Time Vault over Ancestral Recall, Black Lotus, or Sol Ring. What would you take first? I felt like the Rotisserie decks would end up more reminiscent of Vintage decks rather than Cube decks, and I think that Ancestral has a higher win probability added in Vintage decks than Lotus or Sol Ring.
I was actually pretty curious to see what cards would go early. Ancestral, Lotus, and Ring are commonly held to be the best cards in Cube. All of the Power is obviously also insane, but there are some cards that are uniquely powerful and may even be higher value in certain decks than Moxen. Tinker, Tolarian Academy, Library of Alexandria, Fastbond, and Time Vault are all good examples. Indeed, if I had the fourth or fifth pick and Ancestral, Lotus, and Sol Ring had all been taken, I think I would have taken Time Vault, because Time Vault is typically better in Time Vault decks than a random Mox in a different deck. In our draft, the first eight picks in order ended up being Ancestral, Lotus, Library, Ring, Mana Crypt, Time Walk, Mox Sapphire, Mox Emerald (with Mox Pearl on the wheel with Emerald.)
You can see the full draft here.
(Aceman is Charles Dupont; Goose is Dave Guskin, and Chatter is Zac Hill.)
In the first few picks, Dave quickly claimed the Time Vault deck, and Kyle set himself up for a Blue-based Control deck. I laid claim to the artifacts, while Dwayne started in on a Blue-based beatdown deck. Zac saw that no one else was on a storm plan and moved into that deck. Ket had similar ideas to me and picked up Green and White prison cards while Charles just kept taking Black cards. As the draft wore on and I thought I had all of the cards for my deck that other people would want, I took Tundra and some fetchlands, believing both that I would need them to fuel my Armageddons and that if I had all of the nonbasics, others would have even more trouble casting their spells.
Then Ket took Smokestack. Whoops. I snapped up the rest of the lock pieces while everyone else was snagging tutors and other powerful archetype-specific cards. Then Dave took Volcanic Island and Badlands. I wanted Goblin Welder for my deck, and took it a bit too highly because I was afraid Dave would get to it first. Zac promptly took Masticore, and Kyle took Upheaval on the wheel. Frowns! I think I was overvaluing cards that were very good in my deck even though I probably could have wheeled them a bit more because they weren’t as powerful in other decks.
The rest of the draft consisted mostly of folks fleshing out their decks, though there was some excitement in the race to sideboard cards, and I picked up quite a bit of teasing for jamming Paladin en-Vec into my Mishra’s Workshop deck. (For those curious, I am pretty sure I can’t ever lose a game when Workshop is in my opening hand, while I could cast Paladin on turn 3 or 4 pretty consistently and it would do a number on both Greg and Charles.) Ket did pick up Oath of Druids and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn way too late, but Dwayne was able to keep Forbidden Orchard out of Ket’s hands.
When the draft finished, I thought that Dave had the best deck for sure, with the ability to assemble Time Vault/Voltaic Key by turn four reasonably consistently. I thought that my deck was okay and would punish the greedier mana bases that Kyle and Dwayne had while being a dog to Charles’ and Greg’s aggressive decks. I figured that Dave would combo me out relatively easily, but that all of my lock pieces would easily contain Zac and Ket.
My final deck:
1 Polluted Delta
1 Arid Mesa
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Tundra
1 City of Brass
1 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Flooded Strand
1 Tree of Tales
1 Ancient Den
1 Great Furnace
1 City of Traitors
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Marsh Flats
1 Rishadan Port
1 Plateau
1 Shivan Reef
1 Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Master of Etherium
1 Covetous Dragon
1 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
1 Razormane Masticore
1 Sundering Titan
1 Metalworker
1 Karn, Silver Golem
1 Lodestone Golem
1 Synod Centurion
1 Juggernaut
1 Su-Chi
1 Complex Automaton
1 Bosh, Iron Golem
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
1 Prismatic Lens
1 Sphere of Resistance
1 Sculpting Steel
1 Winter Orb
1 Armageddon
1 Azorius Signet
1 Ravages of War
1 Talisman of Progress
1 Izzet Signet
1 Boros Signet
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Grim Monolith
1 Phyrexian Processor
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Tangle Wire
1 Deep Analysis
1 Thoughtcast
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Trinisphere
1 Coldsteel Heart
1 Black Vise
Sideboard
1 Pyroblast
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Magus of the Tabernacle
1 Rack and Ruin
1 Crumbling Sanctuary
1 Goblin Vandal
1 Pyroclasm
1 Paladin en-Vec
1 Rebuild
1 Chill
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Wrath of God
1 Orim’s Thunder
1 Megatog
1 Goblin Welder
The games didn’t quite go how I expected. I drew Sword of Light and Shadow against Charles in game 1, which is almost impossible for him to beat. He ran me over in game 2, but I had the broken Workshop, Trinisphere draw against him in game 3.
My next match, against Greg, featured similarly broken draws. In game 1, I drew Ancestral and then Tinker and just blew him out completely. In game 2, Greg got Smash to Smithereens under Isochron Scepter, but when he tapped out to Smash my Metalworker, I played Chill and Winter Orb before playing Lodestone Golem and Sphere of Resistance and locking him out of the game. He was able to Fireblast the Lodestone Golem with the alternate casting cost, but was never able to cast another spell.
Dwayne, meanwhile, ran me over quite quickly; in game 1 he got Trygon Predator up and running; in game 2 I mulliganed to five and was able to Pyroclasm his Kataki, but got blown out by Viridian Shaman on my Razormane Masticore.
I got game 1 against Kyle by casting Armageddon after he used Thada Adel to put my Winter Orb into play when I had a ton of signets in my hand, but in game 2 he got me with Jace, the Mind Sculptor. I mulliganed to five in game 3 and just had a Razormane Masticore that got nailed by Krosan Grip.
Daniel Duterte tagged in for Dave when Dave took off early, and I ran him over with a broken Workshop draw in game 1. In game 2, he played Voltaic Key on turn 1. I played Goblin Vandal.
My match against Zac was fairly comical. As mentioned above, I blew up all of his lands with Lodestone Golem in play in game 1, so obviously his next turn was Empty the Warrens for twelve goblins. I got him in game 2, and was able to Pyroclasm his turn 2 Empty for a billion in game 3, but then he killed me on turn 3 with Yawgmoth’s Bargain anyway.
The games I won against Ket were mercifully short; in game 1, I put out a 5/3 and then cast Armageddon. I then lost a forty-five minute game where I couldn’t get through Maze of Ith, Kor Haven, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, some removal, and eventually Crucible of Worlds/Strip Mine, before blowing him out with a Workshop draw in game 3.
Kyle and Charles ended up both going 5-2. I went 4-3, and as far as I know, everyone else went 3-4 or worse.
In retrospect, I wished I had drafted a deck that wasn’t quite as aggressive or linear. I spoke with Kyle after the draft and he pointed out how vulnerable all of the linear decks were to two or three counterspells, much less the brutal sideboard cards such as Serenity and Light of Day. Kyle elaborated more on his strategy:
The two resources that were extremely redundant in singleton were mana and countermagic, in my opinion; in aggressive decks, you could easily draw creatures out of order like Dwayne did. Dedicated storm combo decks, meanwhile, have a lot of really awkward opening hands. My assumptions were that most people would go for mana development, as most of the people in the draft were experienced Cube drafters and that is typically how people play in that format. I do wish I had taken Sol Ring over Library first, though.
The thing I think I did most well was draft a very good sideboard; minus one or two mistakes that ended up there (like Aeon Chronicler) in a format like this I want very few cards like Krosan Grip which are single-shot answers. I want cards that when I draw them and can cast them, the game is effectively lopsided, i.e. Aura of Silence, Light of Day, Circles of Protection. So I had 3-4 of those single-shot answers that were simply too good not to have (Abeyance and Krosan Grip specifically) and the rest were just blowouts. I actually think the unfamiliarity with older formats showed in this draft in some players; even Charles didn’t know most of the good sideboard cards. He was actually trying to use Gatherer to find an answer to Light of Day, and I had to tell him about Dystopia when he didn’t find anything. Of course, after the draft, he joined an Urza’s Legacy queue and promptly opened Thran Lens…
Basically, I wanted to draft a control deck with a few two-card hard/soft locks, i.e. Grindstone/Painter’s Servant and Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek, but also tons of annoying synergy otherwise, so that if I get in a stalled gamestate, I have a huge edge with Loam and Forbid or Library.
In talking with Kyle, he also felt that he overvalued win conditions; his Rude Awakening and Aeon Chronicler specifically didn’t really do much for him. I felt that the aggro decks had similar problems; whenever my draw was just a bunch of 4/4s and no disruption, I felt like I was racing to kill my opponent until he got around to doing something broken, and that rarely ended well for me.
The Rotisserie draft was a lot of fun, and also very informative as to the fundamental nature of Constructed decks. I recommend trying it out with your friends. Have fun!
Max McCall
max dot mccall at gmail dot com